Chapter 381 First My Uncle, Then Your Master
The sudden appearance of an entire city off the coast of Highspire City sent shock waves throughout the Divine World.
The advantage of a well-connected information network was that the moment a story broke, everyone heard about it.
The disadvantage was that nothing stayed secret.
This world had no system for quietly making inconvenient posts disappear. Even ordinary people in the Lower Realm could openly joke about the Upper Realm, which said plenty about how freely information circulated.
Of course, they still treated the Upper Realm with respect most of the time.
But with news this enormous breaking, the entire Divine World was thrown into an uproar.
This world had archaeologists too, and they rushed to the site immediately. They wanted to determine when the city had been built, whether any historical records mentioned it, and how an entire city could possibly appear out of nowhere.
Highspire City had stood beside the sea for years, and the waters below had been thoroughly explored. Aside from a few mystic beasts, there had been nothing unusual down there.
Certainly no city.
There was no way something that enormous could have remained undiscovered for so long.
And yet that was exactly what had happened.
No one had found it.
Meanwhile, after causing all that chaos, Zara shot into the air with Lucian and the captive woman and flew off to some unknown part of the city.
Wherever they had landed, they were still somewhere inside Highspire City.
They had moved so quickly that no one noticed them. The first thing Zara did was tell Lucian to get online and inform Valerius that she had come to collect compensation for damages.
Lucian fell silent.
He could already imagine the expression Valerius would make when he received that message.
Ever since the woman had emerged from the ancient city with Zara, she had looked utterly devastated.
Her appearance had also begun to change. Her enormous brown pupils visibly shrank until her eyes looked normal. Her face was still pale and grim, but her features had changed so dramatically that it looked as though she had undergone cosmetic surgery.
Zara studied her despondent expression with interest. "You people from this world are fascinating. Why do all of you change your appearance when you visit ours? What, is Earth's environment not worthy of your radiant beauty?"
Not that the woman had suddenly become breathtakingly beautiful. At best, she was pleasantly pretty in an understated, girl-next-door sort of way.
She simply no longer looked terrifying.
Why had she insisted on appearing like a horror-movie creature on Earth?
Maybe she had wanted to test how much fear the average human could handle.
The woman did not respond to Zara's mockery.
She only stared blankly in the direction of the newly risen city. "Why... Why did this happen?"
"I'd like to ask you the same thing," Zara said. "Based on the timeline, that city shouldn't have anything to do with you. It's been buried for over a thousand years. What kind of creature are you, anyway? Can you really live that long?"
The woman's face grew even paler.
Zara could tell that she was a mystic beast, though she had no idea what species she belonged to.
If she had merely been human, then no matter how closely connected she was to the ruler of the forbidden zone, the Upper Realm should not have feared her this much.
Lucian stood nearby, looking down as he sent messages.
Before coming, he had brought the forged identity credentials they had obtained during their previous visit, which allowed him to access the Divine World's network.
Still, an unregistered identity came with plenty of limitations. For example, contacting the Upper Realm directly was nearly impossible.
Lucian offered a sincere suggestion. "Why don't you fly into the sky and announce that you're here?"
"Absolutely not," Zara replied. "That would go against my low-profile nature."
Lucian fell silent.
She had surfaced an entire city the moment she arrived, and she was still claiming to be low-profile?
Zara rejected Lucian's suggestion.
According to her, keeping a low profile was not really the main issue.
The real problem was that shouting her arrival from the sky would be far too embarrassing.
Lucian considered it a miracle that she was even capable of feeling embarrassment.
The incident in Highspire City had caused an enormous commotion. People from other cities were already pouring in to see what had happened, and the Upper Realm would undoubtedly send someone as well.
They could not keep dragging the woman around indefinitely, so Zara asked, "Hey, where's your master? You caused trouble on Earth, and since you can't afford to compensate me, I'll have to take it up with whoever's responsible for you."
The woman sneered. "Even if I told you, do you honestly think you could get there?"
Zara stared at her. "How can you still be this clueless? You watched me break the curse sealing that entire city, and you still haven't figured out what I'm capable of? Now I understand why villains never get anywhere."
The woman fell silent.
She turned her face away and gritted her teeth. "My master is in the Mistveil Expanse. Look it up online. You'll find it."
Zara and Lucian both fell silent.
That was unexpectedly modern of her.
Lucian immediately searched for it online. His eyebrows rose when he saw the results.
The place was one of the nine great forbidden zones, and it was supposedly the same one Noctilion had once entered as a fugitive.
Remembering what Noctilion had told him, Lucian immediately realized who the ruler of the forbidden zone probably was.
It was most likely the one rumored to have the worst temper of them all.
The Mistveil Expanse lay in the middle of the ocean. The Divine World was larger than Earth, and its oceans were even more vast.
Countless islands dotted those waters. The Mistveil Expanse consisted of several cities, while the forbidden zone itself occupied the island at their center. The entire island was considered forbidden territory and was rumored to be home to legendary mystic beasts.
Yet no legendary mystic beast had been seen there in all these years.
Plenty of mystic beasts still lived along the island's outer regions, but no one dared venture into its center.
A dense fog covered the central region year-round, and the mist was highly poisonous. Whether it was advanced machinery or a transcendent-level mystic beast, anything that entered would be dissolved by the poison.
There were no exceptions.
The Upper Realm possessed a few treasures that could protect someone long enough to enter, but using them came at an enormous cost, so even they did not dare take the risk lightly.
As a result, almost no reliable information about the Mistveil Expanse had emerged over the years.
That only made it more intriguing that Noctilion had somehow managed to enter it.
Now that the woman claimed to come from the Mistveil Expanse, it was clear that her background was every bit as formidable as Owen had warned.
And since she was willing to admit where she came from, she was probably not some ordinary mystic beast living on the outskirts. Most likely, she had come directly from the heart of the forbidden zone.
Zara considered it for a moment. "All right. First, we'll collect compensation from my uncle. Then we'll go find your master and collect the rest."
By this point, the woman no longer doubted Zara could reach the forbidden zone. But the idea that Zara could force her master to pay compensation was still utterly absurd.
She looked at Zara with open mockery.
Even Lucian could no longer stand it. "After everything you've seen, you still haven't learned not to underestimate her?"
If Zara dared to go, did this woman really think she would return empty-handed?
The outcome was practically predetermined.
Lucian suspected that even the beings inside the forbidden zone would have their hands full dealing with Zara.
But the woman still refused to believe it.
Zara could not be bothered arguing with her. When she looked up, she saw the skies above Highspire City crowded with flying mounts and airborne mystic beasts, all heading toward the ancient city that had risen from the sea.